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alarmed Mr. Sedley, junior, that he was on the point of giving
up the expedition, but Captain Dobbin (who made himself
immensely officious in the business, Jos said), rated him
and laughed at him soundly: the mustachios were grown in
advance, and Jos finally was persuaded to embark. In place
of the well-bred and well-fed London domestics, who could
only speak English, Dobbin procured for Jos’s party a swar-
thy little Belgian servant who could speak no language at
all; but who, by his bustling behaviour, and by invariably
addressing Mr. Sedley as ‘My lord,’ speedily acquired that
gentleman’s favour. Times are altered at Ostend now; of the
Britons who go thither, very few look like lords, or act like
those members of our hereditary aristocracy. They seem for
the most part shabby in attire, dingy of linen, lovers of bil-
liards and brandy, and cigars and greasy ordinaries.
But it may be said as a rule, that every Englishman in the
Duke of Wellington’s army paid his way. The remembrance
of such a fact surely becomes a nation of shopkeepers. It was
a blessing for a commerce-loving country to be overrun by
such an army of customers: and to have such creditable war-
riors to feed. And the country which they came to protect is
not military. For a long period of history they have let other
people fight there. When the present writer went to survey
with eagle glance the field of Waterloo, we asked the con-
ductor of the diligence, a portly warlike-looking veteran,
whether he had been at the battle. ‘Pas si bete’—such an an-
swer and sentiment as no Frenchman would own to—was
his reply. But, on the other hand, the postilion who drove us
was a Viscount, a son of some bankrupt Imperial General,

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